The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1887-04-30
Select Sturp.
FINDING Is KEEPING. ?

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Al the Year Round.
CHAPTER 1.
aHullo /" cried boy who was sprawline
on nursery floor. s'Findin's keepln's
Here's the matters sixpence she lost week
ago"
aYou are vulgar" was the rejoinder
made to this by very small girl.
She, Maud, was in her rightful domain,
the nursery. Harry was an interloper, and
the terror of the methodical nurse who
would have the children in exact order.
She had given up Harry three years ago,
and now he was thirteen and, as she de-
clared, he had "grown quite rampageous,
and he do upset the children so :"
The Boyle children were four, headed
by Maud; above her was a vacant space of
three years when Harry showed his Gram
pageous' self; above him came two girls.
There is the family list, headed by father
and mother.
There was not more charmingly COM
monplace, more pleasantly successful fam
ily in the three Kingdoms. They lived in
London suburb, and they had plenty of
friends and comforts.
"You are vulgar ~ Maud had cried.
ssSo'd you be if you got such find.
Hooray l say, where's the mater"
''Gone out, Master Harry" nurse an
swered
aWhat bore Now mind, nurse, that's
nv sixpence Just you keep it safe. i'll
hadn't to play in that match this afternoon
I'd hang about till mother was back.
''Do they want you very much ?"
This was an infantine remark of small
Davy.
'.Don't you make any mistake" Harry
was grand "Should | be in Plummer's
Eleven if wasn't something? Just see
me bat, that's all. "
"1'd like to see you"
81 don't doubt you; but we cant have
kids on our ground"
At which Davy subsided, and Harry
took himself off to don his cricketing fan
nels.
When he had gone the nursery inmates
looked at his sixpence, and each child ham
died it as if there were some magic in it.
"What did Harry mean when he called
out that long word 'indinskeepins ?" asked
Maud.
aBless you, Miss Maud He only meant
COS he'd had the finding he'd have a right
to the keeping.
An accent on each word did not make
the good woman's explanation clear to the
child.
Nurse went on mending socks and the
children returned to their play Maud
kept silence; not common circumstance,
to pass unremarked All at once she spoke
this:
s'Do you mean, Nurse, that if l picked
up hundreds of thousands of gold sover-
eigns they would all be mine ?"
Her eyes were aiight and quite rosy
color was flushing her round face.
"Nonsense, Miss Maud? What should
you be wanting gold sovereigns for?'
"But, if found them p
GAY, 'ifI' You're not likely to find
them, | never did They don't lie about
nursery floors, not they"
HAh, but outside somewhere y And
the child made gesture, as if with her
round arms she would encircle the great,
vague world.
Years went by, and the Boyle nursery
had become almost forgotten thing
Nurse had come to lord it over another
nursery good many degrees higher in the
monetary if not in the social scale, and she,
when her Hfamily was in town" brought a
little lady now and again to see the grown
up children who had once been her babies
But even to this there came an end-a tenn
porary end-for things happened to the
Boyles which carried them out of Nurses
radius altogether.
Misfortune had seized the Boyles, and
they were at their worst when, some ten
years later, we meet them in third-rate
street at New Cross
Five years had been sunny, prosperous
years, then Mr.. Boyle was stricken by a
dire malady, and had to leave business.
He was a stockbroker, but in the year
when illness made it necessary that his city
affairs should be wound up there was panic
upon panic, there were wars and rumors Of
wars, and loss followed loss in rapid sue
cession.
On the eve of his fathers failure Harry
had sailed for Canada. He had bought a
plot of Government land, and he was going
to reclaim it, and, so they all hoped, dig a
fortune out of it.
But a moderate family can live on a
small income if, as the saying is, they 'scut
their coat according to their cloth. Mrs.
Boyle was wise woman, and she moved
to cheaper house. Daisy Cox Margaret)
Boyle was married; Katherine was useful;
Maud, now nineteen, might, if need showed
itself, find work, but Dayy and Dick must
still go to school.
Yes; cycle of misfortune had begun,
the five plentiful years were over, and the
beginning of another five had come-years
Of trouble upon trouble Mr.. Boyle died,
unwilling of the calamitous times; another,
and then third move had to be made,
each one carrying the family step down
ward
How did Mrs. Boyle's blood rebel when
the day came for her to take little Dick to
Seacroft's School, where he was to be
taught and fed and clothed for so many
years free of expense to her. Millionaires
have been known to grow out of boys
brought up at Seacroft's School, but what
cheer is there in that thought to the poor
mother, who sees here little son arrayed in
the school garb, and who sees the gay Sum
mer sun glinting down from the tears in his
blue eyes to the fine new brass buttons Of
his jacket?
But Dick became quite happy lad
there, and he did not know much of the
home troubles; he got his holidays, and he
saw two more new homes, but things were
not said to him. He had come to be four
teen; they were keeping him on at school
because he was so clever.